Note: The SID identifies the instance's shared memory on a host, but may not uniquely distinguish this instance from other instances.

Parameter class

Static

Range of values

Any alphanumeric characters

In an Oracle9i Real Application Clusters environment, multiple instances can be associated with a single database service. Clients can override Oracle's connection load balancing by specifying a particular instance by which to connect to the database. INSTANCE_NAME specifies the unique name of this instance.

In a single-instance database system, the instance name is usually the same as the database name.